United States Supreme Court
Criminal & Immigration Law Decisions of the 2014-2015 Term
Updated: Monday, June 29, 2015
- Brumfield v. Cain, Warden, No. 13–1433, decided June 18, 2015 [Death Penalty, Intellectual Disability]
Sotomayor majority, Thomas dissenting, Alito dissenting
Petitioner Kevan Brumfield was convicted of murder in a Louisiana court and sentenced to death before this Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits execution of the intellectually disabled, Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U. S. 304. Implementing Atkins’ mandate, see id., at 317, the Louisiana Supreme Court determined that an evidentiary hearing is required when a defendant “provide[s] objective factors” sufficient to raise a “ ‘a reasonable ground’ ” to believe that he has an intellectual disability, which the court defined as “(1) subaverage intelligence, as measured by objective standardized IQ tests; (2) significant impairment in several areas of adaptive skills; and (3) manifestations of this neuro-psychological disorder in the developmental stage.” State v. Williams, 2001–1650 (La. 11/1/02), 831 So. 2d 835, 857, 861, 854.
Soon after the Williams decision, Brumfield amended his pending state postconviction petition to raise an Atkins claim. Seeking an evidentiary hearing, he pointed to evidence introduced at sentencing that he had an IQ of 75, had a fourth-grade reading level, had been prescribed numerous medications and treated at psychiatric hospitals as a child, had been identified as having a learning disability, and had been placed in special education classes. The trial court dismissed Brumfield’s petition without holding a hearing or granting funds to conduct additional investigation. Brumfield subsequently sought federal habeas relief. The District Court found that the state court’s rejection of Brumfield’s claim was both “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of clearly established Federal law, as determined by” this Court and “based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” 28 U. S. C. §§2254(d)(1), (2). The court went on to determine that Brumfield was intellectually disabled. The Fifth Circuit found that Brumfield’s petition failed to satisfy either of §2254(d)’s requirements and reversed. Held: Because Brumfield satisfied §2254(d)(2)’s requirements, he was entitled to have his Atkins claim considered on the merits in federal court. - Carroll v. Carman, No. No. 14–212, decided November 10, 2014 [Qualified Immunity, “Knock and Talk”] Per curiam
Pennsylvania State Police Department went to the home of Andrew and Karen Carman searching car and gun thief suspect Michael Zita. With no parking available in front, the officers parked on a side street and approached the house from the rear. After finding a lit and open shed empty, they approached a deck leading to a sliding glass door. They were confronted by a man who refused to give his name. As the man reached for his waist the officers grabbed him. The man twisted away, lost his balance, and fell into the yard. No arrests were made, but the man and his wife later sued Officer Carroll in Federal District Court under 42 U. S. C. §1983, alleging unlawful entry onto their property in violation of the Fourth Amendment when the Officer went into their backyard and onto their deck without a warrant. Held: The Third Circuit erred when it held that Carroll was not entitled to qualified immunity. - Christeson v. Roper, Warden, No. 14–6873, decided January 20, 2015 [Habeas Corpus, Substitute Counsel] Per curiam
Petitioner Mark Christeson’s first federal habeas petition was dismissed as untimely. Because his appointed attorneys—who had missed the filing deadline—could not be expected to argue that Christeson was entitled to the equitable tolling of the statute of limitations, Christeson requested substitute counsel who would not be laboring under a conflict of interest. The District Court denied the motion, and the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit summarily affirmed. Held: In so doing, these courts contravened our decision in Martel v. Clair, 565 U. S. ___ (2012). Christeson’s petition for certiorari is therefore granted, the judgment of the Eighth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings. - City and County of San Francisco, California, et al. v. Sheehan, No. 13–1412, decided May 18, 2015 [Arrest and Americans with Disabilities Act] Alito majority, Scalia concurring & dissenting
Respondent Sheehan lived in a group home for individuals with mental illness. After Sheehan began acting erratically and threatened to kill her social worker, the City and County of San Francisco (San Francisco) dispatched police officers Reynolds and Holder to help escort Sheehan to a facility for temporary evaluation and treatment. When the officers first entered Sheehan’s room, she grabbed a knife and threatened to kill them. They retreated and closed the door. Concerned about what Sheehan might do behind the closed door, and without considering if they could accommodate her disability, the officers reentered her room. Sheehan, knife in hand, again confronted them. After pepper spray proved ineffective, the officers shot Sheehan multiple times. Sheehan later sued petitioner San Francisco for, among other things, violating Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) by arresting her without accommodating her disability. See 42 U. S. C. §12132. She also sued petitioners Reynolds and Holder in their personal capacities under 42 U. S. C. §1983, claiming that they violated her Fourth Amendment rights. The District Court granted summary judgment because it concluded that officers making an arrest are not required to determine whether their actions would comply with the ADA before protecting themselves and others, and also that Reynolds and Holder did not violate the Constitution. Vacating in part, the Ninth Circuit held that the ADA applied and that a jury must decide whether San Francisco should have accommodated Sheehan. The court also held that Reynolds and Holder are not entitled to qualified immunity because it is clearly established that, absent an objective need for immediate entry, officers cannot forcibly enter the home of an armed, mentally ill person who has been acting irrationally and has threatened anyone who enters. Held: The question whether §12132 “requires law enforcement officers to provide accommodations to an armed, violent, and mentally ill suspect in the course of bringing the suspect into custody,” Pet. for Cert. i, is dismissed as improvidently granted. Further, Reynolds and Holder are entitled to qualified immunity from liability for the injuries suffered by Sheehan. Public officials are immune from suit under 42 U. S. C. §1983 unless they have “violated a statutory or constitutional right that was ‘ “ ‘clearly established’ ” ’ at the time of the challenged conduct,” Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U. S. ___, ___, an exacting standard that “gives government officials breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments,” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U. S. ___, ___. The officers did not violate the Fourth Amendment when they opened Sheehan’s door the first time, and there is no doubt that they could have opened her door the second time without violating her rights had Sheehan not been disabled. Their use of force was also reasonable. The only question therefore is whether they violated the Fourth Amendment when they decided to reopen Sheehan’s door rather than attempt to accommodate her disability. Because any such Fourth Amendment right, even assuming it exists, was not clearly established, Reynolds and Holder are entitled to qualified immunity. Likewise, an alleged failure on the part of the officers to follow their training does not itself negate qualified immunity where it would otherwise be warranted. - City of Los Angeles, California v. Patel et al., No. 13–1175, decided June 22, 2015 [Fourth Amendment, Hotel Guest Records]
Sotomayor majority, Scalia dissenting, Alito dissenting
Petitioner, the city of Los Angeles (City), requires hotel operators to record and keep specific information about their guests on the premises for a 90-day period. Los Angeles Municipal Code §41.49. These records “shall be made available to any officer of the Los Angeles Police Department for inspection . . . at a time and in a manner that minimizes any interference with the operation of the business,” §41.49(3)(a), and a hotel operator’s failure to make the records available is a criminal misdemeanor, §11.00(m). Respondents, a group of motel operators and a lodging association, brought a facial challenge to §41.49(3)(a) on Fourth Amendment grounds. The District Court entered judgment for the City, finding that respondents lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in their records. The Ninth Circuit subsequently reversed, determining that inspections under §41.49(3)(a) are Fourth Amendment searches and that such searches are unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment because hotel owners are subjected to punishment for failure to turn over their records without first being afforded the opportunity for precompliance review. Held: Facial challenges under the Fourth Amendment are not categorically barred or especially disfavored. Section 41.49(3)(a) is facially unconstitutional because it fails to provide hotel operators with an opportunity for precompliance review. - Davis, Acting Warden v. Ayala, (also listed as Chappell, Warden v. Ayala) No. 13–1428, decided June 18, 2015 [Batson challenge, harmless error]
Alito majority, Kennedy concurring, Thomas concurring, Sotomayor dissenting
During jury selection in respondent Ayala’s murder trial, Ayala, who is Hispanic, objected that seven of the prosecution’s peremptory challenges were impermissibly race-based under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79. The judge permitted the prosecution to disclose its reasons for the strikes outside the presence of the defense and concluded that the prosecution had valid, race-neutral reasons for the strikes. Ayala was eventually convicted and sentenced to death. On appeal, the California Supreme Court analyzed Ayala’s challenge under both Batson and its state-law analogue, concluding that it was error, as a matter of state law, to exclude Ayala from the hearings. The court held, however, that the error was harmless under state law and that, if a federal error occurred, it too was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18. Ayala subsequently pressed his claims in federal court. There, the District Court held that even if the ex parte proceedings violated federal law, the state court’s harmlessness finding could not be overturned because it was not contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law under 28 U. S. C. §2254(d). A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit disagreed and granted Ayala habeas relief. The panel majority held that the ex parte proceedings violated Ayala’s federal constitutional rights and that the error was not harmless under Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619, as to at least three of the seven prospective jurors. Held: Any federal constitutional error that may have occurred by excluding Ayala’s attorney from part of the Batson hearing was harmless.
NOTE: Kennedy and Thomas used their concurring opinions to argue the merits of solitary confinement. - Elonis v. United States, No. 13–983, decided June 1, 2015 [Interstate Communication of Threats] Roberts majority, Alito concurring and dissenting, Thomas dissenting
After his wife left him, petitioner Anthony Douglas Elonis, under the pseudonym “Tone Dougie,” used the social networking Web site Facebook to post self-styled rap lyrics containing graphically violent language and imagery concerning his wife, co-workers, a kindergarten class, and state and federal law enforcement. These posts were often interspersed with disclaimers that the lyrics were “fictitious” and not intended to depict real persons, and with statements that Elonis was exercising his First Amendment rights. When Elonis’s former employer informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the posts, the agency began monitoring Elonis’s Face-book activity and eventually arrested him. He was charged with five counts of violating 18 U. S. C. §875(c), which makes it a federal crime to transmit in interstate commerce “any communication containing any threat . . . to injure the person of another.” At trial, Elonis requested a jury instruction that the Government was required to prove that he intended to communicate a “true threat.” Instead, the District Court told the jury that Elonis could be found guilty if a reasonable person would foresee that his statements would be interpreted as a threat. Elonis was convicted on four of the five counts and renewed his jury instruction challenge on appeal. Held: The Third Circuit’s instruction, requiring only negligence with respect to the communication of a threat, is not sufficient to support a conviction under Section 875(c). - Glebe v. Frost, No. 14-95, decided November 17, 2014 [Habeas Corpus under AEDPA, Structural Error] Per curiam
Frost helped two associates commit a series of armed robberies. During trial, Frost claimed he acted under duress and, alternately, that the state had failed to meet its burden of proof. The trial court required that the defense choose one theory for closing argument. Frost was convicted and subsequently filed a Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus, which was denied by the District Court and reversed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Held: Assuming for argument’s sake that the trial court violated the Constitution, it was not clearly established that its mistake ranked as structural error. Therefore the Ninth Circuit had no power to grant Frost’s habeas corpus because the Washington Supreme Court’s decision “was [not] contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” or “was [not] based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d). - Glossip, et al v. Gross, No. 14–7955, decided June 29, 2015 [Death Penalty, Lethal Injection Drug]
Alito majority, Scalia concurring, Thomas concurring, Breyer dissenting, Sotomayor dissenting
Because capital punishment is constitutional, there must be a constitutional means of carrying it out. After Oklahoma adopted lethal injection as its method of execution, it settled on a three-drug protocol of (1) sodium thiopental (a barbiturate) to induce a state of unconsciousness, (2) a paralytic agent to inhibit all muscular-skeletal movements, and (3) potassium chloride to induce cardiac arrest. In Baze v. Rees, 553 U. S. 35, the Court held that this protocol does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. Anti-death-penalty advocates then pressured pharmaceutical companies to prevent sodium thiopental (and, later, another barbiturate called pentobarbital) from being used in executions. Unable to obtain either sodium thiopental or pentobarbital, Oklahoma decided to use a 500-milligram dose of midazolam, a sedative, as the first drug in its three-drug protocol. Oklahoma death-row inmates filed a 42 U. S. C. §1983 action claiming that the use of midazolam violates the Eighth Amendment. Four of those inmates filed a motion for a preliminary injunction and argued that a 500-milligram dose of midazolam will not render them unable to feel pain associated with administration of the second and third drugs. After a three-day evidentiary hearing, the District Court denied the motion. It held that the prisoners failed to identify a known and available alternative method of execution that presented a substantially less severe risk of pain. It also held that the prisoners failed to establish a likelihood of showing that the use of midazolam created a demonstrated risk of severe pain. The Tenth Circuit affirmed. Held: Petitioners have failed to establish a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the use of midazolam violates the Eighth Amendment. - Grady v. United States, No. 14-593, decided March, 30, 2015 [Fourth Amendment, Life Time Monitoring of Sexual Offender] Per curiam